EPA warns manufacturers: Violate new environmental law and risk up to 10 years behind bars
Authority sensitizes Ejisu firms on Act 1124 as Ghana overhauls three-decade-old environmental governance framework
Ghana’s Environmental Protection Authority has put the country’s manufacturing sector on notice, warning that violations of the newly enacted Environmental Protection Act, 2025 could result in custodial sentences of up to ten years, a stark signal that the era of weak enforcement on environmental compliance is drawing to a close.
The warning was delivered at a sensitisation workshop held in Ejisu in the Ashanti Region, where the EPA brought together approximately 20 manufacturing firms to educate them on the provisions and implications of Act 1124, a piece of legislation that represents the most significant overhaul of Ghana’s environmental governance framework in over three decades.
Central to the EPA’s message in Ejisu was the case for why the new legislation was necessary in the first place. The Ashanti Regional Director of the EPA, Dr Jackson Adiyiah Nyantakyi, was direct in his assessment of what the previous framework, the Environmental Protection Agency Act, 1994 (Act 490), had failed to deliver.
After more than 30 years on the books, Act 490 had become increasingly inadequate in the face of contemporary environmental challenges. Issues such as modern waste management, pesticide control, and the complex regulatory demands of climate change had all outgrown the capacity of a law designed for a different era.
Act 1124, Dr Nyantakyi indicated, was enacted specifically to close those gaps, equipping the EPA with the legal tools and authority needed to address the environmental realities of the 21st century and to hold violators genuinely accountable.
Perhaps the most attention-grabbing element of the workshop was the EPA’s detailed breakdown of the penalties that Act 1124 places on the table for those who fall foul of its provisions, consequences that are considerably more severe than what the previous law prescribed.
Under the new legislation, any person who fails to pay an administrative penalty commits an offence that carries, upon summary conviction, a fine of not less than 5,500 penalty units and not more than 15,000 penalty units, or a custodial sentence ranging from five to ten years, or both.
The penalties extend further. Dr Nyantakyi drew particular attention to Section 37 of the Act, which deals with obstruction of public officers in the lawful execution of their duties.
“Under Section 37 of the Act, any individual who obstructs a public officer in the lawful execution of their duties commits an offence and may face a fine ranging from 500 to 1,000 penalty units, or a prison term of one to two years, or both,” he said.
The message to manufacturers was unambiguous: non-compliance and obstruction are no longer low-risk choices. The legal consequences are real, significant, and already being applied, Dr Nyantakyi noted that several individuals have already fallen foul of the new law since its introduction.
Beyond the penalties, the workshop also carried a forward-looking message about how businesses can position themselves not merely to avoid punishment but to genuinely integrate sustainable environmental practices into their operations.
Ejisu EPA Director Joseph Amoako Addai used his session to educate participants on the concept of cleaner production, a proactive, prevention-first approach to environmental management that seeks to address waste and pollution at the source rather than attempting to manage their consequences after the fact.
He described cleaner production as an integrated strategy that applies preventive environmental thinking across processes, products, and services, designed simultaneously to improve operational efficiency and reduce risks to both human health and the natural environment.
The framing is significant. Rather than presenting environmental compliance purely as a legal obligation to be met under threat of punishment, the EPA is making the case that sustainable production is also a smarter, more efficient way to run a business, an argument likely to resonate with manufacturers focused on their bottom lines.
The workshop in Ejisu also served to highlight an important expansion in the EPA’s own institutional powers under Act 1124. The new law empowers the authority to review and revoke decisions concerning environmentally sensitive areas that may pose risks to public health, a significant strengthening of its oversight mandate that gives the agency greater ability to intervene where environmental harm is threatened or occurring.
Dr Nyantakyi urged all manufacturing operators in attendance to take the sensitization seriously and to begin aligning their operational and planning processes with the new legal framework without delay, a call that, given the penalties now attached to non-compliance, manufacturers in Ejisu and across the country would be wise to heed.
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